Just following the footsteps of Apple’s Siri and Google Now, Microsoft is reportedly to bring its own voice-enabled personal assistant in April 2014. Cortana could be the big rival to Siri voice assistant that the Redmond software company is planning to release with Windows Phone 8.1.

About Siri, Apple first of all unveiled it in fall of 2011, Google then took the wraps off Google Now in the summer of 2012 and today, Microsoft is at long last about the release of its own personal digital assistant – dubbed Contara.

Here some geeks of mobile and especially the Windows Phone Lumia fans are eagerly waiting for Microsoft’s Cortana voice-controlled personal assistant, and while the Microsoft is big in artifiial intelligence, voice recognition and simultaneous translation research, which can compete with the friends of iPhone with Siri and Android handsets with Google Now.

Reports say that Microsoft plans to release its Cortana virtual assistant this spring, just in time for its annual Build developers’ conference. According to the tweets of an MS follower MSFTNerd, the new service is likely to be integrated directly with Bing and users can activate it on their mobile devices simply by saying the phrase “Bing tell me…”

Here’s the amazing R&D demonstrations that you see in the embedded video below, will be transferred successfully to Cortana, remains to be seen, and likely very soon.

The acclaimed leaker MSFTNerd hinted that it will arrive to Lumia devices in beta form some time in April, just as we heard. So no wonder there will be new WP features presented, as well as the rumored Threshold UI for the Windows portfolio.

MSFTNerd also says that “the service will expand to the Bing app for iPhone in the US market this fall” and that “the underlying technology will be extended to American Xbox One & Windows users in 2015 with Threshold.”

The sample questions it will answer are below, evidently you will be able to make small talk, like with Google’s or Apple’s virtual assistants:

“Bing Tell Me ..” “.. will it rain today?” “.. when’s my next meeting?” “.. how do I get to the American Airlines Arena?”